I'd like to continue this discussion and extend the idea of custom Site members' permissions for sharing information. It would be very useful to have implemented the following security options that can be configured for the particular site user(s):
- Read-only access (Permission for modifying any objects): Site member can view full site information but cannot modify (edit/delete) anything. Commenting only is possible.
- Permission for modifying own objects: Site member can add objects (tree items, persons, photos, etc.), edit/delete objects added by himself, but cannot modify objects added by other members.
- Permission for deleting objects: Site member can add/edit but cannot delete any obects.
- Permission for modifying biographical facts about persons: Site member can edit information about any persons, but cannot add/delete objects.
I would like to start making a weekly question for my family to respond to and then be able to see how they answered. This would be simular to how the Poll feature works, but also show, atleast to the person who made the question, how everyone responded to it, and see who answered it correctly.
Best way to go about is by using an Event.
You can post an event from the family home page or from the tab called “Events”. Eeither way, click the “Post an event” button. Enter the question in the title of the event, enter the due date for responses in the date and add a description as needed. After posting it you have the option of emailing everybody about the even (the question). You can select who you want to receive the email. When a member receives the email, the can click the link in the email to add a comment, which is really to answer the question. When someone writes a comment to an event you posted, you will receive an email about it. You can then go to the event page (via the email or the site itself) and see who answered what. The comments (answers) are also shown in the family news section in the home page as news items. So it’s quite a powerful feature that I’m sure will do the trick.
Are tags supposed to be imported along with photos? Nearly all of my photos on my computer are tagged with the names of the people in them. It would be nice if these tags would be read and added by My Heritage when the photos are uploaded. If it is suppose to do this already, I haven't seen it. It is a fundamental feature of any photo sharing site.
First, we need to understand what you mean by “my photos on my computer are tagged with the names of the people in them”. How did you tag these photos? Did you tag them in Family Tree Builder by MyHeritage.com, in some other genealogy software or by some other means?
If you are creating your tree adding photos and tagging them in Family Tree Builder then when you publish the tree from Family Tree Builder to your family site, the tagging information is published to the site as well.
If you are importing a GEDCOM file and then uploading the photos to the site separately, then the tagging information that might have been saved by another genealogy software is not loaded to the site since the connection between the GEDCOM file and the photos is lost.
I'm referring to the standard exif, iptc or xmp tags used by photo editing and gallery programs. EXIF contains info saved by cameras listing date, exposure, lens, etc. IPTC is used for user-added tags like names, places, events, captions. XMP is a tag standard created by Adobe and embraced by Microsoft which can save more complicated data like locations of faces-boxes and names associated with them.
I use Windows Live Photo Gallery to tag my photos with names, places, events, etc. These kinds of tags would show up in the general Tags section, I know they wouldn't work for a direct "People Tag". Although Windows Live Photo Gallery has a face tag feature similar to My Heritage. It draws a box around a face and associates that to a name, and saves the position/tag data to XMP.
If My Heritage could read and use tags already added by users using their photo library programs, it would save a lot of duplicated effort. I can deal with re-doing th face tagging, the Heritage interface for this makes it easy to do.
We read EXIF information about the photo but we currently do not read the tagging information. Even if we do (and we might in the future), it will still be impossible to safely connect the name tag you added to the photo with a particular individual in the tree. There may not be a perfect match in the name, or there could be an ambiguity where more than one individual matches the name tag. So it will be quite a challenge to come up with an easy to use interface for connecting between name tags in EXIF data in the photos and the correct individuals in the tree. Having said that, challenges are never something we shy away from here so we’ll so some brainstorming and see what we can come up with.
I am still baffled by what you do and don't do with the internal exif information. To check it, I just uploaded a photo in which the date taken is 1924. When it gets into myheritage.com, the date shows as 1920. It looks to me like you try to mine information from the file name and ignore internal information about the photo. On the other hand, it seems that myheritage sometimes does get the date out of the internal EXIF information. I strongly recommend using the internal title/caption/description/date taken/location and so forth if it is there. The fact that it is there shows that people have taken the time to enter the information so it is especially valuable. I understand the difficulty of getting people tags into the photo, but title and date are simple and straightforward and should be used.
MyHeritage.com has the hability to read EXIF info of pictures. This info is included in the section Photos & Videos of you site, in the description located on the right side of each photo.
Currently this information is not being used for any purposes on the site, but I agree with you and think that it could be a great idea to get this info for different purposes on the family site.
Thank you so much for your suggestion! I have forwarded it to our technical and it will be taken in count for further improvements of the system.
Please do not hesitate to contact us directly to: support@myheritage.com for further suggestions, comments or questions.
I see how connecting imported tags to the tree would be a challenge, but I think including these tags in the general tags field, and importing captions shouldn't be too difficult if you are already reading EXIF.
These would relate more to the social/photo sharing aspect of the site than the genealogical.
I still think it would be easy to use the date and title information if it is there. It it's not there, then do what you do now and try to pull it out of the file name. After all, even facebook has figure out how to do this. It can't be too hard.
On the other hand, I understand the difficulty with people identification but that is not an excuse for not using the embedded date and title information if it is there.
Please consider this soon. I was buoyed with hope when I noticed the recent helpful changes regarding attaching photos to events, but disappointed that you still do not use the date and title in the name.
Both myself and my mother have FTB installed on out PC's and we would both like to be able to make additions to the same tree independently. This would need FTB to check that the local version of the tree is the same as the version on the website, downloading the new tree if a more recent version exists.
In fact, MyHeritage has started working on this very feature that allows full synchronization between FTB and the family site. Expect it to be out in the near future.
I'm interested in a good repository for family history, replete with detailed notes and evidence of vetting. Although I have thousands of photos in my database at home, I'm not much interested in posting them because I recognize they consume monstrous amounts of storage. A couple of years ago, I uploaded my GED file and looked at it a few times but gave up for several reasons. First this system was painfully slow. Secondly, I couldn't figure out why the thousands of notes and citations were not available. Yesterday and today, I again invested time in my file here but found the same problems. I don't know how this system achieved #3 but perhaps I'm missing something. I'll check back when I have plenty of time to search for my notes, citations, links, etc. If anyone has hints for me, I'd like to hear them. In the mean time, I'm still looking.
which you will reach once you click on his name in the People page.
You will see the notes there.
We are planning to improve this feature,
so that the notes will be made more accessible.
Regards,
Noam MyHeritage Team.
Thanks, Noam. I found how to add notes--and they show up in the person's page (family tree-->notes & sources). But I'm not understanding what the difference is, in genealogy, between the "citation" tab, then "source" button & the "notes" tab in Family Tree Builder. I listed "obituary" as the citation when referring to the obituary of Nicholas Fachilla in my tree. However, as I also listed "obituary" as a citation for another family member, when you view Frank's events & facts-->death-->obituary, it shows the 2 people that I listed "obituary" for in their citations. What would be the proper way to use the citations tab in FTB? I'm thinking that I should maybe have written the name of the newspaper, but even that could feasibly produce duplicates--for instance, if a particular newspaper listed several obituaries for persons in the tree. And then what goes in the "source" button under the "citation" tab? It might be helpful if better descriptions were added to the FTB User Guide for these detail areas.
Here's an image of Citations, where you can put in text, and then if you edit the source, there's yet another spot for text. What's the difference? (well...maybe not! Why does your site say a 97.4 KB image say is over 300 KB?)
For example, you can add a source to your project: the Bible.
You can do that using the View > Sources menu.
You can fill in the details about this source, as well as a short description in the text field (This is the new testament, as it was published in .....etc ).
Now, you might have a person in your tree named Noah, and you want to add a citation to his card, with a reference to his name in the bible.
You will then double click on his card,
go to the citations tab,
choose the source from the drop down list (the Bible)
and put the relevant sentence or text in the 'text from source' field.
If the source is a newspaper, I would put the date to avoid duplicates: The Times 4/5/86 for example.
Thanks for the reply. I gave it my best but just don't have enough time left on this earth to wait for this program. It's pretty but just doesn't function well enough for me. thx. anyway.
